CSC Is 173 For You?

CSC 173 is no longer in the pre-major sequence for the BS in Computer Science degree. And there are no pre-major requirements for the BA in CS, so a fortiori it isn't necessary for the BA either. See BS, BA, and Minor Curricula Descriptions for full details.

CSC 173 is a core course for CS BS majors, and should be taken as needed for either curiosity or to fulfill prerequisites for other CS courses.

In terms of the "classical" system of education, or trivium , it's mostly concerned with grammar and logic , with a whiff of rhetoric. The link above relates the trivium to childhood development and early education, but it's a general concept. For 173, maybe we can say:

I see all my computer science courses as part of a liberal education , in the sense that it is the education a free person (as opposed to a slave) needs to get the most out of life. Here's the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal on the long-term economic and quality-of-life benefits of a liberal education.

Our goal is to get acquainted with several formal systems that have been influential in computer science, and to investigate some of their applications (e.g. inspiring and providing the foundation for a computer programming style, or providing the basis for solving important practical problems like communications protocols, compiling, system analysis, graphics ...)

In more detail, we shall study:

More Detail

Textbook

There is no single text: we shall use reserve materials from the former text for CSC173 as well as current texts for other CS courses and other materials, plus lots on on-line resources. The subject matter of this course is well-understood and there are many resources...finding them and using them wisely will mostly be the student's responsibility. Check out the How To page and the 'Distributed Textbook' page for the course.

Prerequisites

There are four conceptual prerequisites for CSC 173:

  • knowledge of at least one imperative programming language, preferably Java, C, or C++
  • understanding of fundamental data structures (lists, stacks, queues, trees, hash tables)
  • basic algorithm analysis techniques (Big-O analysis)
  • programming maturity

    All of these prerequisites should have been met by taking, for example, CSC 162 or 172: Data Structures or an equivalent course. If you are unsure of your background, contact the professor.


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    Last Change: 08/28/09